Oooooooooooooo boi

If you think Digital Humanities is exclusive lemme tell you about being a woman in Military History and more narrowly, a woman pursuing Military Theory. There are very few women military writers, most of them write about having spouses in the military, the home-front, or affairs with generals. Let’s narrow down the field a bit more to women that write about military history, and even then we don’t talk about hard military tactics (unless you’re Jennifer Murray, I love you and your work and you inspire me every day). Now let’s narrow it EVEN FARTHER into women that study military theory. Me. Now let me say that again for y’all in the back: THERE ARE NO PROMINENT WOMEN MILITARY THEORISTS. You have people like Sun Tzu, Machiavelli, Clausewitz, and Jomini.

What I am doing, while not “hard” military theory like artillery and weapon movements and troop formations, it shows the social side of war. Because we often forget that war, as Clausewitz so famously puts it “War is nothing but a duel on an extensive scale”. It is organized murder for a cause of a government or non-governmental organization. This affects the human psyche in so many ways as expanded upon in On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society by Dave Grossman (which has honestly changed my life and my outlook of warfare).

These young men, barely out of their teenage years were thrust into a war against their own countrymen to fight for the future of a nation, North or South.

This project is different, it is revolutionary in the sense that it deals with an aspect of war that is not discussed often. It is revolutionary in the way that it is a resource on military history that is interactive and open to the public free of charge and free of any elitist military vocabulary. It is revolutionary in the way that it is done by a 19 year-old female civilian.

The field of military history is changing with West Point leading the charge by digitizing their textbook, which is basically just a huge digital project now. It gives the experience that users did not have before such as 3-D models of guns, ships, and other weaponry, interactive battle maps, etc. While my project does not have all those fancy thingamajigs, it does have interactive elements to be more hands-on with the knowledge. It has visualizations to better display the information. I have videos and wikipedia pages and links to other pages of information on every battle so that even those who do not know what happened at the battle of Gettysburg can learn more not only about the battle, but about the men who fought in it.

I want people who would not usually be interested in the Civil War or in military history to look at this project and not only understand what happened to the cadets, but to feel for them. And also to show that anyone can do military history.

-Julia

 

On Coworking

For the past few weeks of the fellowship, our cohort has been very focused on coworking. When the library is open, we sit together at a table on the second floor, surrounded by windows. After hours, we move to a basement room in Glatfelter.
This style of working has a number of benefits. Personally, it has been one of the most prominent ways I have experienced the communal nature of the digital humanities. When we work together, we are in support of one another, have the opportunity to bounce ideas off of each other, and, perhaps most notably, can vent about the frustrations we feel towards our projects. Coworking also helps to keep us motivated. Our individual feelings of determination feed into one another so that our workplace is focused.
All of this being said, sharing a workspace also leads to a lot of stress relief. While we realize and value the importance of working hard, we also know that we have to stay positive and not burn ourselves out. The best work happens when we approach our task enthusiastically and with support.

A Community of Digital Scholars

Throughout the summer the fellows and working group have often discussed the values of digital humanities. One value that we always come back to is collaboration. This summer has really been a summer of collaboration. I could not imagine this summer without working together. I feel that if this summer was structured as an independent research fellowship, I would have not have learned as much as I have. If I was told find some tools to work with and create a project, I would only look for tools that fit my vision for my site. I would not have stopped to explore anything outside of my own project.

From what we have discussed over the summer, I have learned that digital humanities is a community. I have explored new ways of displaying data and research in a digital form because of our digital community. The workshops and sessions I felt were based on group involvement. For some sessions, we had to look up different projects or research a specific tool and present our findings to the cohort. This alone fostered an environment of collaboration. Some of the projects and tools Lauren and Julia found, I would not have found on my own. These small presentations allowed us to work on our presentation skills as well as exchange information about different tools and projects.

I also found that the lunch meetings greatly helped form our own digital humanities community. We were able to connect with one another as well as our mentors and advisers. We were open to research help and advice and I believe that the working group truly helped us all form and shape our digital projects. We understood that we could not do this alone and that we needed help. Most of us did not really know what digital humanities was or what went into building a digital project.

Lastly, the fellows have created a strong bond over the summer. This bond is both academic and personal. We were able to listen to each other’s research, projects, thoughts, opinions, jokes, and memes. We were able to ask one another for advice on the direction our project, our research, and the look of our website. Lastly, we were able to help one another in almost every aspect a colleague and friend could.  We were there for Julia when she cried over the fact the Alonzo may have been killed by his best friend. Julia and I listened to Lauren’s frustration over the fact that Gettysburg students were not really involved in a lot of social movements. Lauren and Julia were there for me when I couldn’t figure out Scalar.

This sense of community does not only apply to our own fellowship. This applies to the entire digital humanities community. I remember R.C telling us that twitter was a great way to communicate with other members of the digital humanities community. If you have a question, all you have to do is send a tweet to the DH community and see who responds. We were also able to work with the students from Lafayette College in many aspects of our projects.

The idea of digital humanities as being a community informs us that its not just a community for those who have the privilege to be a part of it. Instead, it tells us that digital humanities is a community in which anyone who chooses to, can be a part of. To create a digital project you need the people who can code, the people who can research, and the people who can design to work together to create something unique. I believe that we have created something unique over the summer with one another and the digital humanities community.

A Mosaic of People

In a small town in Slovenia, Ana Ros co-owns a world-renown restaurant with her husband. While discussing her success as a chef, she stated that, “when one is loved, she can create better.” As a Digital Scholarship Summer Fellow, I experienced this type of productive love by being a member of the Digital Humanities community of practice.

A community of practice is a group of people in a profession who are oriented towards a similar goal. The similarities that tie the people to one another create a support system within the group itself and encourage the further development of the digital humanities. The DSSF working group taught me that this support system is rooted in trust–I trust that the working group, my fellows, and the larger DH community will critique, guide, inform and inspire my work as they have done in the past.

Had I entered the program and been left to my own devices, I (and my project) would have been misguided and dysfunctional. The only person I could have had trust in was  myself, which would have been terrifying and impossible because I didn’t have any experience in the field of digital humanities and hardly any in the realm of technology. In our very first week of the fellowship, we were introduced to the definition of DH through various pieces of dialogue and critique. Examining and discussing multiple people’s opinions proved that the only way to truly carry out the digital humanities was to become immersed in the community of practice.

Connecting with various members of the DH community this summer emphasized to me that projects are driven by passion. Consequently, people apply the same passion to the DH field more generally and help build the foundation of trust by sharing, working on, and analysing other people’s work. By devoting the same level of enthusiasm to another person’s project that one would devote to their own, the community of practice makes clear that they are devoted continuing the development of DH and spreading it to various communities.
The idea that DH is a community of practice implies that it is self reliant. The main support for the field comes from within, rather than from exterior or corporate entities. This gives members of the community greater autonomy and the possibility for new and innovative ways of creativity and learning. The community is made up of a mosaic of people, who each have the opportunity to contribute their own work and ideas to advance and promote DH.

Ramblings of a Reformed Technophobe

I can honestly say that before this fellowship, I was a technophobe. I disliked technology with a strong passion. I always preferred doing things the “old fashioned way” (this could have been a sign that I was a budding historian or that I was a pretentious hipster). I prided myself on the fact that I didn’t know how to use social media but I knew how to work a 1960s Polaroid camera. Our discussion on Monday about how we use and view digital tools made me think about my own hesitations towards anything digital.

The discussion on Monday was accurate in pinpointing the reasons why some students are still uncomfortable with using technology in an academic setting. From personal experience, my technophobia stems from what I was taught in elementary school and high school. I can still remember having to go to the library to do a research project. When the internet started to become more widely used, I was taught that the internet was an unreliable source. (Who has gotten the Wikipedia spiel?) This trend continued throughout my middle school career until the message “the internet is unreliable” was embedded in my mind.

When I came to Gettysburg I fell into my routine of only using books. I found myself struggling to use the online resources for research because I didn’t know how to navigate the online resources. Even though I was brought up in a very digital world, the people who are/were my teachers were not and still stick to the traditional learning methods. I don’t think there is anything wrong with sticking to the traditional methods of teaching, however, I think it is important to show that digital sources can assist us in the classroom. This summer I have learned about the benefits technology brings to academia and I can say I am no longer a technophobe. If the digital humanities community wants to continue, we must encourage students to explore the depths of technology.